1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to foreign language learning methods and, more particularly, to a method for learning a foreign language using a learning aid.
2. Description of the Related Art
Any program of learning by its very nature requires teaching, either by one's experience or by formal instruction. The process of teaching follows an interaction with anything that exists, and learning a relationship thereto.
To know or to discover and to identify anything that exists creates cognition, which is the act of knowing or identifying. Cognition may be called perception, according to each individuals' mode of learning (their modality). The task-oriented result is education.
A modification of individual behavior is education. It does not matter whether an individual is learning to tie shoelaces, to housebreak a dog, to resolve complex mathematical equations, or to develop a marketing campaign for canned chicken soup, education occurs when prior learning enables the modification to be achieved. However, achievement is based upon the elements of education functioning within two concepts, intelligence and/or intellect.
All humans exhibit intelligence, which may be defined as memory or recall. It is through experience that individuals proceed from conscious memory or recall to an imprinted action that requires no conscious effort. The experience of learning how to tie shoelaces or open or close a water faucet initially requires conscious memory/recall, but after repetitive actions a modification of behavior takes place and a stimulus to an individual will create a rote response, called imprinting. This basic element of education makes it possible for an individual to touch, type, play a piano, drive a car, or to read, write, and speak words that transmit thoughts.
All humans exhibit intellect in varying degrees, which is the ability to understand relationships. Intellect is the ability to take elements of intelligence and understand their relationship in order to produce reason, as an outcome of learning. This element of education is evidenced by a modification of behavior that may be called understanding or comprehension, and permits the individual to solve highly complex problems.
Everyone uses convergent thinking in order to do daily tasks, whether making breakfast, dressing, or going to the supermarket, intelligence permits routines to easily be accomplished. Repetitive tasks are more easily accomplished through convergent thinking operations. The degree to which individuals are convergent in their thinking is generally environmentally generated. Convergent thinkers tend to be very literal in their understandings of concepts, and especially new concepts. They tend to associate themselves with rigid and unyielding attitudes and policies regarding nation, political party, culture, organization, or a belief system in which they have been imprinted. The degree to which this behavioral mode impacts their education is a function of an individual's behavior modification. For convergent thinkers, utilizing a high-interest level material, which delivers immediate gratification where such material is transmitted through imprinting in one's native tongue and transmuted to a target language, can be a major driving force concerning motivation for implementing a method for learning a foreign language. Convergent thinkers rely heavily upon their intelligence (memory/recall). To the convergent thinker, a brick may be used to build a house, build a fireplace, construct a brick walkway, or to build a wall.
Environment plays a major role in creating divergent thinking skills. The ability to consider divergent understandings of learning anything is called intellect. Knowing or identifying anything is cognition, and once it is registered in the individual's memory, it may be re-cognated or recognized. Combinations of previously learned material are brought together by the divergent thinker in order to provide reasoned understandings of new concepts. These new concepts come together in a confluent amalgam to produce education, a new understanding that has modified the individual's behavior. Divergent thinkers rely heavily upon their intellect, the ability to see relationships. To the divergent thinker, a brick may be ground into red powder and mixed with plaster in order to make a relief map of the Rocky Mountains. Two bricks may be placed in a lavatory's reservoir to reduce water consumption. The inside of a brick may be hollowed and filled with jewelry for placement in a brick wall to hinder burglars.
Learning is completely dependent upon the individual's modalities during the act of cognition. A brief examination of some of the modalities of learning, and its impact upon the modification of the learner's behavior is imperative if education is to take place. Convergent and divergent thinking operations are performed by individuals using their favorite combination of methods for solving problems, because their experience has shown them that the mindset of methods they are using to think has been the most productive manner to learn anything they consider. Those methods of solving problems are called modalities.
Auditory discrimination is vital if the individual is to pursue language in a meaningful way. Primary to the effective use of a method for learning a foreign language, an understanding of the sounds of printed letters as they are blended together into a word which is identifiable as a component of an idea. This concept is referred to as codex. English language learners follow a phonetic approach, which is based on convergent thinking. These learners quickly move from decoding letters into sound, to whole word recognition in order to form word clusters that can be put together with lucidity. In the Anglo-Saxon language, sounds of the word are often different than the sounds in the word. The word “sugar” is not “soogar”. The visual discrimination of gum/gun, when expressed in the context of a sentence, is often difficult if auditory discrimination has not be properly dealt with, as auditory discrimination proceeds visual discrimination in human development. For example, “He took the gum/gun in his hand,” requires the use of divergent thinking abilities as the reader adjusts the literal decoding of the word as perceived and discriminates its meaning as evidence by the word's proper pronunciation because the reader is aware of the sense of the sentence. For example, “You can open the can.” This visual discrimination follows perceptions/cognition and is completely dependent upon auditory discrimination.
The ability to read a map, follow a blueprint, understand a design, navigate a course, and conceive geometric concepts is the result of a schematic modality which has very important implications for learning. Many people have learned to read using flash cards which enable individuals to wee whole words that they might have difficulty spelling, such as Lieutenant, cafeteria, Mississippi, and boulevard. However, these words are readily understood in the context of a sentence thanks to schematic ability on the part of the reader. Schematic thinking occurs when the imprinting of the word's design is established in a convergent inventory of knowledge and it is this cognition that permits recognition of a word that represents identifiable thought. A common example is the Coca-Cola® logo.
Language learning for individuals with a strong figural modality can be strengthened using imprinting as an outcome of convergent thinking. The symbiotic relationship of mathematics to musical ability, which is often used in the playing of an instrument with both hands, requires the functional understanding of an equation. The popularity of Dr. Seuss's® basic use of poetical music in a series of children's books to young children, below the age of puberty, when a better understanding of relationships provokes intellectual thinking, gives testimony to the subliminal use of the music in our language and its importance in imprinting whole words, word clusters, and/or a codex in an individual's inventory of knowledge as a result of convergent thinking operations. Childish jingles, advertising slogans, popular tunes, the Psalms, and worship liturgics are understood and retained through the modality of figural thinking operations.
It is most often thought that there is a symbiotic relationship between age and maturity, and that is the reason children and adolescents tend to have a short attention span. That concept is false. Children and adolescents can absorb themselves in a video game or an age appropriate television show for hours at a time. Adults, at any age, evidence a very short attention span except for one intervening variable, their apperceptive base. Apperception is the ability to perceive clearly, to observe, to recognize and to have full understanding of the assimilation of new information as a result of convergent thinking (memory/recall) operations provoking the individual's inventory of knowledge, which may produce, in the case of a divergent thinker, intellectual outcomes. An expanded attention span fuels the desire not to leave in the middle of a movie, television show, interesting book or other sedentary intellectual involvement. An expanded attention span is often identified as motivation. It relies heavily upon an apperceptive base which motivates the individual's desire for an outcome concerning the current task-oriented activity. That outcome has been projected by the individual's prior inventory of knowledge. The motivating result is satisfaction, because the individual projected the end of the movie, the television show, the interesting book, or other activity. A method for learning a foreign language must provide high interest level, age-appropriate material, synchronized with a program which provides audio and visual discrimination and its concomitant delivery of a phoneme inventory to the learner.
In teaching a foreign language, many traditional methods have been utilized such as the translation method, the audio-lingual method, the direct method, and the total immersion method. These methods utilize memorization, grammar, repetition, speaking and listening, communication exchange, learning aids, and audio-visual media. However, the aforementioned conventional methods have been unsuccessful in providing a method by which a foreign language can be learned quickly, easily, and efficiently.
Accordingly, there is a widely recognized need for a method by which a foreign language can be learned by building an active foreign language alphabet in a natural way as it is done in user's native language in a manner which is quick, easy, and efficient. The development of the method for learning a foreign language fulfills this need.
A search of the prior art did not disclose any patents that read directly on the claims of the instant invention; however, the following references were considered related:
U.S. Pat. No. 6,325,630 B1, issued in the name of Grabmayr;
U.S. Pat. No. 4,734,036, issued in the name of Kasha;
U.S. Pat. No. 5,735,693, issued in the name of Groiss;
U.S. Pat. No. 5,810,598, issued in the name of Wakamoto;
U.S. Pat. No. 6,341,958 B1, issued in the name of Zilberman;
U.S. Pat. No. 6,409,510 B1, issued in the name of Firebaugh;
U.S. Pat. No. 6,736,641 B2, issued in the name of Quiroz;
U.S. Pat. No. 5,215,466, issued in the name of Rubio;
U.S. Pat. No. 3,271,884, issued in the name of Roberson;
U.S. Patent Application no. 2003/0203343 A1, published in the name of Milner;
U.S. Pat. No. 5,275,569, issued in the name of Watkins; and
U.S. Pat. No. 6,810,374 B2, issued in the name of Kang.
Consequently, a need has been felt for an improved method for learning a foreign language in a manner which is quick, easy, and efficient.